EUCHARISTIC LOGIC: TO GIVE IS TO MULTIPLY

Reflections on the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ: Genesis 14:18-20, 1 Corinthians 11:23-26, Luke 9:11b-17

In its first post-pandemic assessment of global progress entitled Poverty, Prosperity, and Planet Report 2024, the World Bank reports that 700 million people (8.5 percent of the global population) live in extreme poverty (on less than $2.15 per day) and 3.5 billion people (44 percent of the global population) live in poverty ( on less than $6.85 per day). Owing to setbacks due to COVID-19, population growth, and lack of inclusive growth, the number of people living on less than this standard has barely changed since the 1990s due to population growth.

Is it not paradoxical that the world is overflowing with an abundance of wealth and resources, yet half the global population still suffers from hunger, malnutrition, and poverty? This is the greatest paradox of our modern world: poverty amidst plenty. The Solemnity of Corpus Christi aims to reverse this trend: instead of “poverty amidst abundance”, we find another path, a different dynamic: “abundance in poverty”.

This path/ dynamic unfolds in three stages:

1. We encounter a great need while resources appear severely limited and insufficient. The twelve asked Jesus to dismiss the crowd, for it was getting late. There were about 5000 men (not including women and children) in need of lodging and provisions, and all they had were five loaves and two fish.

2. The logic of the market raises a practical, rational question, but a response of faith challenges us to hope. When Jesus tells them, “Give them some food yourselves”, the logic of the market replies, “Five loaves and two fish are all we have, unless we ourselves go and buy food for all these people”.  In John’s version of the miracle (6:1-15), the contrast is more evident. Philip calculates, “Two hundred days’ wages would not buy enough bread for each to have a bite” (market logic). Andrew reasons, “What is this for so many?” (scientific reasoning). But Jesus responds, “Have the people sit down”—shifting Philip and Andrew from market logic to the logic of Hope.

3. The logic of the Eucharist manifests in the gesture of giving/sharing, leading to abundance. The Gospel echoes the four Eucharistic gestures: “Jesus took the five loaves and the two fish, said the blessing, broke them, and gave them”. The miracle produces 12 ‘abundant’ baskets of leftovers.

The Eucharist effectuates a shift from ‘poverty amidst abundance’ to ‘abundance in poverty’. The key to this transition from scarcity to overflowing plenty is to give/share. The logic of the Eucharist teaches us that ‘to give is to multiply’. Jesus accepts the offering of the five loaves and the two fish and transforms them through the Eucharistic actions of ‘taking, blessing, breaking, and giving’, the same verbs that echo in the institution of the Eucharist (second reading).

The Eucharist, like the multiplication of the loaves, is a sign. It unfolds the reality of God’s presence and the boundless life given through Jesus, who, by His sacrificial death on the cross, became the living bread that sustains all generations. Therefore, Paul insists in the second reading, “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes”. The transformative power of the Eucharist is rooted in Jesus’ redemptive sacrifice. His self-giving results in abundant life. The twelve baskets of leftovers testify that the entire world is called to share in the overflowing mercy and gift of Christ.

The logic of the Eucharist inspires us to stand in solidarity with the suffering around us and share our hope with those who have none. It is from the little we have and the little ones that we are that Jesus acts. Our offering, however small, our prayer, however imperfect, matters. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin suggests that the true substance to be consecrated each day is the world’s development during that day – the bread symbolising appropriately what creation succeeds in producing, the wine (blood) what creation causes to be lost in exhaustion and suffering in the course of that effort.

The Eucharist offers up the tears and blood of the poor and invites us to help alleviate the conditions that produce tears and blood. The transformative power of Jesus’ self-giving invites us to embrace the Eucharistic logic in our journey from scarcity to plenty, from poverty to abundance, from the market logic to the logic of giving, from the logic of reason to the logic of Hope.